Rant #1,426: Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?

This weekend was a slow one for myself and my family.

My wife worked on Saturday, so I went about my usual chores--like buying groceries--without her.

On Sunday, we didn't do much of anything, so I had a great chance to watch a lot of TV this weekend, what with the sports that I were interested in--namely, the Yankees versus the Mets, a series which the Yankees won--playing their games later in the afternoon or in the evening.

Anyway, I got my full dose of the new Decades channel, a CBS entity that promises to show a lot of older shows that I enjoy so much more than the garbage on TV today.

The shows are well written, well cast, well crafted, and they do get to you.

Last week, they had on "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.," and please, the movie version of this series, coming later this summer, cannot possibly be as good as the TV series was.

This weekend, and for that matter, still running as I write this, is a really old TV series which I watched as a kid in reruns. It is called "The Millionaire," and the premise is a pretty simple one.

A reclusive multi-billionaire, John Beresford Tipton, is so rich that he has a need to give away his money in million-dollar doses.

He employs an escort, stoic Michael Anthony--played by barrel-toney Marvin Miller--to give away the money, tax free--the taxes have already been paid by Tipton--to unsuspecting people in all walks of life, from policemen to housewives to actors to store clerks.

There is only one stipulation: the new millionaire cannot tell anyone, except his spouse, where the money came from.

Simple as that--and the 1950s viewing public ate this premise up.

Running for five seasons, from 1955 to 1960, the show was a solid hit for CBS. Showing what happened after the new millionaire got his or her money, the show was a real fantasy for the viewers, and probably would be today, too.

Calculated today, that million dollars in 1950s money would be more than $8 million today, and that is probably why every reincarnation of this show since its original run has faded. Sure, a million dollars is something to behold, and I wish I had my own "Millionaire" to present it to me. But the number has almost become blase, when you consider what some actors and actresses and ballplayers get each year.

Anyway, I watched several episodes of the show yesterday, and taped others to watch at a later time. With Tipton never shown--you only see his hands and arms doing something, like playing cards, and you do see tobacco smoke too--the show is pretty much the same each episode. However, some of the episodes play out like soap operas, others like comedies--with laugh tracks, no less--and others are really straight drama.

One that stuck with me was the one where a veteran police detective gets awarded the money. His wife had been nagging him to leave the force, because his work was so dangerous.

The money allows him to leave the force, but his partner gets critically wounded by a crook they had been pursuing for months, and the detective decides that right before he leaves, he has some unfinished business to take care of. With his retirement papers ready to be processed, he goes back and hunts down the criminal with a younger, more raw partner.

Of course, the get their man, the detective's original wounded partner survives, and he finally has peace of mind and retires.

Yes, every episode pretty much has a happy ending, one way or the other, and I guess that is also a draw to the series.

For me, it is so interesting to see some excellent actors--and some then newer performers--cast in each episode, people like Peter Graves and Angie Dickinson and Dick Sargent and Agnes Moorhead and ... the list goes on and on.

So right now, if you have the Decades channel, turn the show on. Yes, it can be sappy, but I distinctly remember watching reruns of this show in my childhood, and it still can get to you in a very interesting way.

The Decades channel actually begins its regular run on May 25, but the binges it is now showing really do whet your appetite for the possibilities that this channel has.

Move over MeTV and Antenna TV and Cozi TV--yes, I believe there is enough room to another retro-TV channel, and Decades is it!